


Safe Harbour

by Beleriandings



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode: s02e11 Adrift, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26702863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: "Other Staff issues: Seeing Gwen experience it for the first time took me right back to when I first heard that terrible scream. After Gwen had gone home, I just held on to Ianto for a couple of hours, as tightly as I could." –Captain's Log,Adrift(Ianto's take on what happened after the events of Adrift.)
Relationships: Gwen Cooper & Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 20
Kudos: 73





	Safe Harbour

The others had all gone home and Ianto was tidying up alone in the Hub, when Jack finally came back.

Ianto stopped in his tracks, seeing Jack’s stance and demeanour as he came through the door. If he was honest, he’d been bracing himself for the argument all day: Jack had been vehemently against telling Gwen, and Ianto hadn’t had much luck persuading him. Which is why he’d taken matters into his own hands. And he’d been ready for the consequences, to take them fully on himself; after all, it was hardly Gwen’s fault, was it? Her natural curiosity had brought her very close to the truth about Flat Holm, but it had been Ianto deliberately going behind Jack’s back that had finally led her to it.

And he’d been ready to take whatever consequences there would be on himself. Still, for a moment he tensed, waiting for Jack to be angry, or for that particular coldness to come over his gaze the way it sometimes did. It would hurt, of course, as it always did when they had a row, but eventually Jack would forgive him again. And it was worth it, he told himself. Gwen’d had to know. She had to know _why_ this was a secret. And if Ianto had to bear the consequences of that choice then he would.

But instead of fury or cold dismissal, to his very great surprise he found Jack stepping into his space, throwing his arms around Ianto’s waist and tucking his face into Ianto’s shoulder. For a moment Ianto just stood there frozen in his arms, inhaling the smell of Jack’s hair, enjoying the familiar warmth and presence of him. But after a while he drew back.

“Ianto...” Jack’s voice sounded a little rough, and he raised a hand touch Ianto’s cheek as though making sure he was real.

And just like that, Ianto knew he was forgiven. Not that he knew why exactly, but he could make a guess.

Or rather, he could guess roughly what had happened; what he didn’t know, it was very easy to piece together from the records he’d read. He stayed quiet and just let Jack put his hands on his jaw and stare into his face, though the eye-contact was rather intense. Jack’s fingers still bore the slight windchill that usually meant he’d been on a roof somewhere for a bit; that would explain the hours that had passed at least.

Yes, on thinking about it Ianto thought he could guess exactly what had happened.

“Was it...” he gestured, thinking back to Jonah Bevan’s record. “The time?”

Jack sighed, and nodded, drawing a breath that shuddered just a little. “Seeing Gwen experience it for the first time… it made me remember the first time I heard… that scream, and...”

Immediately, Ianto’s awareness sharpened; Jack might talk a lot of misdirective nonsense sometimes, but he didn’t typically leave sentences hanging unless something was badly wrong. Ianto put his hand over Jack’s, on his face. “Come on” he said, gently taking Jack’s hand off him. “Let’s go to bed.” It was still rather a gamble, but he didn’t think now that Jack was angry with him.

“Mmm” said Jack, clearly lost in his own thoughts.

Ianto took his other hand, held them between them and stepped into Jack’s space, testing the waters. Jack was still avoiding his eye, and Ianto was about to kiss him – gently, it didn’t do to rush things when it was like this – mostly to get his attention, distract him and keep him from slipping away into one of the many shadowed places inside his head. But at that moment Jack’s arms came up around him again, squeezing him around the waist and tucking his face into Ianto’s shoulder once more.

Ianto frowned, fingers stroking through Jack’s hair automatically; whatever he’d been expecting – a black mood, the cold shoulder for a while maybe – it hadn’t been this.

Ianto had already surmised that Jack was much more affected by the experiences of the people taken by the Rift than he let anyone know; it was why he’d set up Flat Holm in the first place. He didn’t know why – he assumed there _was_ a specific reason, something in Jack’s long past that made him want to guard and care for those that could be salvaged from the cosmic flotsam and jetsam, over and above ordinary compassion. But while he was curious, as he was about many things about Jack’s past, it didn’t really matter so much to Ianto.

What mattered was this, he thought, as he gently extricated Jack’s hand from his waist, holding it and separating them just enough to turn them and walk Jack back to his office, down the ladder into the bunker. Jack followed his direction easily, as though his mind was mostly elsewhere.

And _oh_ , Ianto found himself feeling a tender pang in his chest at that; Jack was never, ever like this with anyone else, never let the others see it. But Ianto liked to think that this trust Jack placed in him meant… well, _something_ at least. 

Just what that was, was a different question, and one too bound up with the churning morass of feelings of his own that Ianto still needed to sort through and untangle, before they could make him do something rather stupid. Again. He never seemed to get it right, acting on feelings alone. And so once they were down the ladder he concentrated purely on the physical actions of it, helping Jack off with his shoes and his belt, pulling down his braces and taking off his clothes. It was a familiar dance, and Ianto could of course undo every fastening on Jack’s clothes by touch alone. But for once there was nothing very sexual about this. Jack needed comfort, needed assurance, and he needed it from _him_ , despite the way Ianto had gone behind his back earlier. And Ianto was there to give it to him, of course he was.

When Jack was down to his t-shirt and boxers, Ianto sat him down on the edge of the narrow bunk and stripped off his own clothes with efficient speed, hung up his suit jacket and trousers and tie and folded the shirt, and got in the bed with Jack.

He’d thought Jack might reach for him immediately, and he did. But where usually they might be kissing by now, hands all over each other, now Jack just shifted them so that he was at Ianto’s back, clutching him very tight around the middle. He could feel Jack’s warm breath on his neck, his heartbeat – and he always took comfort from that, that eternal rhythm – and Jack’s lips pressed to the vertebra at the top of his spine as he squeezed him tighter. After a moment, Ianto thought he could feel the slight dampness of tears at back of his neck.

But he didn’t say anything about it; he only shifted a little to make himself more comfortable in Jack’s arms – and to be honest, he was already very comfortable there – hands coming up to Jack’s forearms and holding on too for good measure.

He let Jack just hold him, until eventually he fell into a restless sleep full of ephemeral snatches of dream, like sand and shifting water. At one point he thought the whispering of it might almost be words, spoken close to his ear. But they were gone too quickly to make sense of, drawn away by the currents of sleep before he could grasp their shape.

* * *

The next morning, Ianto woke alone in Jack’s bed. Not that that was particularly out of the ordinary; Jack was often up before he was, though whether he really needed less sleep than your average twenty-first century mortal human or whether he was just saying that was a question Ianto had yet to pin down the answer to.

Nevertheless, he was feeling distinctly on edge as he slipped out of the bunker to the showers, washed and shaved quickly and dressed in a clean suit from his locker. He wondered how it would be between the two of them this morning, unable to shake the feeling that something had shifted between them last night. Like something had changed for good.

But if he was expecting Jack to be cold to him again when he brought him his morning coffee, he was wrong; Jack’s usual smile was back, though perhaps there was a shade more weariness in it than usual. And a bit of something else too, now Ianto thought about it; a very slight hint of something that wasn’t there when he smiled at the others.

Ianto let their fingers brush just slightly against the warmed china handle of the mug as he passed it over, and then went off to start the others’ morning coffees as he heard the door alarm blare, signalling someone else had come in.

He was still at the coffee machine when he became aware that Gwen was watching him. She was doing a good job of being subtle about it, but Ianto was good at noticing things like that about people; it had been a skill he’d had much occasion to practice. And so after he’d noticed the way she lingered after passing the kitchen area on her way in, he couldn’t help but spot the way she kept shooting him concerned looks under her lashes all morning, the slight, nervous over-earnestness in the grateful smile she gave him when he brought her coffee in her favourite rainbow-striped mug.

Gwen wanted to speak to him, Ianto surmised, and he was sure he could guess what about. She was trying to be tactful – or as tactful as one could be while still so newly processing… everything to do with Flat Holm, he thought with a pang of sympathy – but himself, he would rather she got it over with.

And all the while, he was aware of Jack watching over them; even when he couldn’t physically see Jack staring out over the Hub through the glass of his office window, or from the greenhouse or the upper gallery, he knew Jack would be keeping one eye on the CCTV feed for the main space of the Hub. He knew him well enough to picture the exact tension in him, absorbing the sense of the unsaid things between Ianto and Gwen and broadcasting it back around the Hub. The others had apparently picked up on the rather fraught mood too; Owen had retreated down to the autopsy bay hours ago, and Tosh was keeping her head down, busying herself taking down Gwen’s wall of missing persons and filing the records away.

By lunchtime Ianto couldn’t stand the tension any longer, and decided he was going to put them all out of their misery. “Gwen” he said, coming over to stand by her desk. She looked up a little too fast, still twitchy he saw. “I’ve ordered lunch and I’m going to collect it, but I’ll need some help carrying. Come with me?”

She blinked a few times, searching his face, before – thankfully – she seemed to get what he was driving at. She gave him a wearily grateful smile and a small nod as she pulled on her jacket and grabbed her phone. As she was doing this, Ianto let himself turn and catch Jack’s gaze through the glass of his office window, receiving a small nod and a smile from his trouble.

He and Gwen didn’t speak until they’d reached the door of the tourist office, stepping out into the light, a chilly breeze ruffling their hair as they walked along the waterfront. But the silence was more comfortable than it had been this morning; it seemed that with the assurance that they _would_ talk sooner or later, some of the tension seemed to have ebbed away.

They were nearly at the row of shops and cafes now. But as they were about to turn away from the railing by the water, Gwen extended a hand to touch his arm and hold him back. “Ianto...”

He turned to her. “Gwen.”

She opened her mouth but seemed to change her mind, frowning. “Just wanted to say… thanks. For, you know.”

“The GPS.”

“Yeah.” She frowned. “I… just hope it didn’t come back on you… I mean, you and Jack...” she floundered a little. “I hope he knows it wasn’t your fault. You did what you had to, because it would have been worse for all of us, the longer I’d carried on with…” she tailed off and her brown crinkled up, “...and for all of them...” her eyes darted out over the water, face twisting in something like pain. He looked out too; he couldn’t actually see Flat Holm from where they were standing, but it was plain what she was thinking. “Look, Ianto” she put her hand on his arm where it rested on the cast-iron railing. “The point is, if Jack’s upset with you, or angry, or… anything, then let me talk to him. Let me tell him it was my fault, that… I don’t know.”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know, but you were going to find out anyway.” He shrugged. “That’s all there is to it.”

Gwen swallowed, eyes tearing up slightly as she squeezed his arm. “Jack’s not upset with you, then? Because, well, you went behind his back, didn’t you? And last time you...” she trailed off, as she felt him tense. “...Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up–”

“Gwen.”

She glanced up at him. “Hmm?”

“Jack’s not upset with me. Or you” he said quietly. “He’s just _upset_.”

“Oh… oh” she said. She frowned. “He didn’t seem… I mean, are you sure?”

Ianto sighed. “Last night” he said quietly, “d’you know what he did? He wasn’t angry. He didn’t shout, we didn’t even argue. He just...” he felt odd admitting this out loud, his natural instincts all running counter to revealing so much. That was to say nothing of the strange tender place it had touched inside him, that he didn’t quite know what to make of himself. But if it would put an end to this, if it would put her mind at rest… he gestured. “I thought we’d either have a row, or he’d send me home and keep me at arms’ length for a few days, but...” he frowned. “He didn’t do either of those things.”

“What did he do?”

“He just… held me” said Ianto, even quieter. It was easier to say these things when they were both looking out over the water, rather than while making eye contact. But he owed her an explanation, he thought, to put her mind at rest. He darted his eyes surreptitiously to the side to see Gwen’s reaction, and saw her train of thought clearly enough. “No sex, no nothing” he said quickly. “He didn’t even say much, really. Just held onto me all night, like he needed...” he tailed off, realising he didn’t know how that sentence should end himself.

“ _Ianto_...” Gwen’s voice was gentle, her hand warm on his arm. She didn’t need to say more, he thought; just the way she said his name, acknowledgement and understanding of the bleak truth that hung between the three of them now, him and her and Jack. Three’s a stable number, in its own way; better than two, for secrets that weigh so heavy. Though it was only the two of them right now, both of them feeling the absence of Jack more as they talked about him, tracing out the shape of the distinct spaces he filled in their lives.

“...I did the same, you know” said Gwen, interrupting his train of thought. The words seemed to come in a rush, as though she was just realising something. “I did the same, when I got home to Rhys. Just… held on to him. Didn’t let go.”

Ianto nodded. Gwen was staring at him, as though seeing something she hadn’t before. “I’m glad” he said, because he was, but he didn’t really know what else to say. Better let her think her way through this in peace, maybe; it had taken him a bit of time to process too.

“...I was just so grateful to have him there, was the thing” continued Gwen, nudging him. “Just, someone to hold on to, y’know? Someone I trust, someone I love...” she frowned. “So, when Jack–”

“Did you tell Tosh and Owen?” Ianto asked abruptly, turning his head to look at her, more to put a stop to that line of conversation than anything; it wasn’t as though he hadn’t had it with himself before, but now wasn’t quite the time. Besides, it was an important question. “About… Flat Holm. All of it” he clarified, gesturing out over the water.

Ianto had to admit he was thinking purely in practical terms – easier that way, always easier – but as soon as he said the words, he knew how Gwen would take them; an invitation for more soul-searching. Which, for his part, was about the last thing Ianto wanted. But it was probably what Gwen needed, he suspected. And it might divert them away from the state of his own heart, which, surely, was for the best.

Sure enough, Gwen frowned. “I told Tosh” she admitted quietly. “I didn’t want to, didn’t want to put this on her, you know? But she was working on the project with me, and she’s so smart she would’ve worked it out anyway, so better I just...” she tailed off. “I… said she could tell Owen, if she wanted. I saw her talking to him after on the sofa, so...” she shrugged. “Jack gave them access to the files, anyway. So they can look through it all if they want.”

Ianto let out his breath, shoulders untensing just a fraction. So everybody knew then. It had been just his and Jack’s secret for so long he’d half-adjusted to it. But also, he felt oddly nervous; he always felt rather protective of Jack’s secrets, and this one more than most.

“Jonah’s mum” Gwen said, interrupting his thoughts once more, “Nikki Bevan. She hates me now, I think. Didn’t want to see me again. I mean, I know why, but...” she gathered herself, steadying her breathing for a few moments. “But she refused the Retcon we offered. And Andy went to see her after, and she’s started packing up all those tapes she had, and Jonah’s things.” She sighed. “So maybe she’ll move on, some day? I hope she will.”

“She will” said Ianto, heart suddenly heavy with recollection; packing up a flat in London, his life and Lisa’s, in a hurry because he needed to go. He could still save her, he’d thought then, and he needed to get to Cardiff to do it; he hadn’t brought much with him, because physical things mattered not at all in the face of that, when you still had hope. Then doing it again during his suspension, packing those few things he’d taken with him into boxes all over again. It was always cardboard boxes, he thought. His own life would be packed into boxes when he died, and hopefully the act of it would be cathartic and provide some sort of closure for… well, someone. Whoever was left standing. Which, realistically, would be Jack. Assuming Jack was still around by then.

Ianto didn’t know which option was better, but he knew which one he – perhaps selfishly – would prefer.

But at least he was sure of what he’d told Gwen; Nikki Bevan would hurt, yes, she would hurt terribly. But the pain wouldn’t be so acute forever, if she was lucky.

Gwen seemed to trust something in his voice, because she clasped both her hands around his forearm again, leaning her face against his shoulder as the wind tugged at their hair and clothes. He thought he heard a quiet sob at his side, so he brought his other hand up and laid it on top of hers, giving them an awkward pat, and she seemed to appreciate the effort.

After a little while she sighed, drawing herself up and away from him, trying to brush fastidiously at the shoulder of his jacket she’d cried on. “Sorry” she said. “Must be sick of people crying on you and hugging you like a bloody teddy bear over this. First Jack, now me...”

“I find myself getting used to it” said Ianto, inclining his head with just the hint of a tired smile.

Gwen gave a slightly teary laugh. “We were going to get lunch” she said. “You said you ordered ahead, they’re going to be waiting...”

“Oh, um. We should definitely get lunch, but I didn’t actually order ahead… that was a clever ruse to get you to come out with me.”

She chuckled, patting him on the arm. “...Oh, Mister Jones, you're a real criminal mastermind.”

“Goes without saying” he smiled, the tension already easing slightly. “And I gathered you needed the fresh air.”

She laughed again and shook her head, slipping her arm through his as they walked together along the waterfront, turning their backs on the shifting waters of the bay.

For the moment, at least.

**Author's Note:**

> That line from the BBC Captain's Log just got me SAD okay!!! But also it got me thinking!!! And this was the result!!!  
> ...Also yes. yes the title is in part a deeply self-indulgent reference to that one mostly-unrelated thing that happened in Just This Once, because I couldn't resist, and part a reference to the episode title "Adrift" itself. But my next choice of title would've been a lyric from [Harbor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKDXe0FP2wc) by Vienna Teng, so if you want some vibes that kind of fit this story I would invite you to listen to that! I just really love the concept of Ianto needing to feel useful and wanting to be there to support the others as a comfort thing of his own.  
> Let me know what you think, or say hi on tumblr @ultraviolet-eucatastrophe!


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